The Nets made their stand last night against LeBron James, and Brooklyn showed up to stand with them.

When you are The King of your sport, you live for these occasions, when the opponent is reeling and desperate and you have the chance to go for the throat and choke the last vestiges of life out of it.

Once you become The King, every game becomes a Game of Thrones, every series a Series of Thrones.

Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, remember, came to Brooklyn to threaten The Kingdom, and with a lot of luck and Mikhail Prokhorov maybe installing a Fountain of Youth somewhere inside Barclays Center, to dream the improbable dream of shocking the world and somehow wresting the crown from The King.

That dream stayed alive Saturday night when Brooklyn, a 104-90 winner, played with a toughness and an edge and a pride that reflects Mike Tyson’s borough and refused to let King James grab a 3-0 series lead and bury it.

“We’re not scared of them,” Pierce said.

Or of him.

“They played a better game than us tonight, obviously,” LeBron said.

It rained on the King’s parade. It rained 3s. Fifteen of them. Five from Joe Johnson. Four from Mirza Teletovic.

“A lot of the 3s that they made were contested,” James said.

Rained defense. Rained rebounding. Rained Brooklyn.

“I’ve been part of a lot of series and understand the series is never won in two games or three games, and you move on to the next one, and you learn from the previous one how you can get better going into the following one,” LeBron said.

There was this, in the first quarter, from The King:

Blew by Pierce and drove past Garnett for an underhand scoop and converted the 3-point play. This, after drilling a 3 on the previous possession.

Ran down Johnson, driving 1-on-1 against Shane Battier, to get a piece of the layup attempt.

Stripped a driving Pierce, then converted a 3-point play on a continuation at the other end.

Buried a right wing 3 that gave him 16 points (6-of-7 shooting) for the quarter.

“I felt great in the first quarter,” LeBron said.

The Nets weathered that storm anyway.

He finished with 28. On 8-of-15 shooting. By the way, he also had eight rebounds and five assists.

“The ball just didn’t tend to find my hand a lot in the second quarter,” LeBron said.

Deron Williams even showed up as an attacking facilitator (11 assists).

You saw the desperation when Johnson went sprawling on the floor for a 50-50 ball with Wade.

Pierce, more active than most 36-year-olds, dug in against LeBron. Then Teletovic dug in. They all dug in.

Andray Blatche, a royal pain in the paint, bedazzled Chris Bosh with a crossover dribble and right hand scoop to the hoop. It gave him 13 of his 15 points at intermission.

The Nets were playing the way you expected a team fighting for its playoff life to play, with passion and energy and urgency.

They moved and shared the ball the way the ’69 Knicks did and finally Teletovic drained a 3 from the right corner and Blatche’s tip-in gave them their biggest lead of the series, 64-56, and Erik Spoelstra wanted to talk it over.

It didn’t immediately help, because the Heat deficit ballooned to 12, and stayed 12 when Teletovic answered a LeBron 3 with one of his own. And when Teletovic buried another 3, it was 74-61 and there was bedlam in Brooklyn and Spoelstra wanted to talk it over again.

It didn’t help.

It wasn’t long before Alan Anderson was flailing away at Ray Allen and the combatants had to be separated.